There's an old guard mentality that's also deeply rooted in top-tier school elitism in many cases. I think a lot of new people may be afraid to speak up because all they see is talk about the "T14" in every forum.

I don't think that's the case with BLSD though. Gone are the days when there were several outspoken Yalies, Harvardlings, Columbians, Michiganders, GULCites, and such dominating the board. Now I think there's a fair mix of law school representation.

That's true, but much like SFLSD and Exile, you guys don't venture out from BLSD much, so new commers see this thread as beening as cliques as the others (rightfully so or not)

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*In clinical studies, Matthies was well tolerated, but women who are pregnant, nursing or might become pregnant should not take or handle Matthies due to a rare, but serious side effect called him having to make child support payments.

Yeah, it definitely ain't like it used to be. It used to be, if you posted in this thread at 10am, and messed around and came back at noon on the same day, your post was easily about 5 or 6 pages back. And don't post something at night and then go to bed. Done! You'd come back and see 30 new pages of conversation took place while you were getting your beauty rest and your post, whatever it was, was long gone!

Now I understand that the alumni are busy. Of course.

What I don't understand is why a new crop of pre-law students are not coming in by the droves? This site was one of the first things I looked up when I finally got my acceptance to law school. Is there some other site that folks are flocking to now or are they just not flocking to anything in general? And if not, what's the motivation to stay in hiding vs. coming out and meeting your potential classmates?

Most people are now at Top Law Schools. It has a pretty sweet search function and is a really organized board. Sad though because I've always liked LSD better and I think that LSD has better info for URM students.

I agree. I've visited that site. It sucks aesthetically.

However a SEARCH function would come in very handy. I can see how that could make a difference. I don't know happened to our search function here. It used to work. Perhaps that contributed to the decrease in traffic?

I'd put better-than-even money on that.

I know I gotta quote you quick before you poof and disappear!

Yeah that's something I think I'm going to definitely have to talk to Andrew about.

The search function is really only one small part of the problem. I can see all of the options in the poll playing some part. This place is just very closed off to new blood. There's an old guard mentality that's also deeply rooted in top-tier school elitism in many cases. I think a lot of new people may be afraid to speak up because all they see is talk about the "T14" in every forum. Granted, it's not nearly as bad as XOXO or even TLS, but it's still there. Whether that's by accident or by design is irrelevant; it's the effect that matters. We're going to need a full-scale paradigm shift to make any headway. We need to draw out some of the lurkers who are going to lower-ranked schools, lay the smack down on people who ridicule or demean anyone who goes to a lower-ranked school than they do, and try to quash the "T14 or starve" posts before they get started. Yes, that's going to take some serious moderators and much heavier hands than have been seen in the past. But any major change does.

No doubt.

When I came in (waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day when men were men and sheep were scared) there were your standard T-14 posters, but there were SO MANY MORE posters who were not going to any T-14 schools.

Indeed, if you look back on this very thread's beginning, there were hardly any regulars who were attending T-14's. We had "A" and his partners in crime "OSA" and "Monica" at Yale, Random Black Guy, Lacoste and KoreanBLack at Harvard, and that was about it.

Everybody else (over 90%) were from non-T-14 schools, myself included. And it was perfectly fine. Nobody poked fun at anybody else for not being in a T-14 and the non-T14 folk were proud of the those of us who were in attendance at the T-14's.

Now granted, BLSD may be a slightly different animal with respect to a sense of community, because for us, we were just glad to see another black person in law school PERIOD. It did not matter (and still doesn't) where the heck you got accepted to and what law school you ended up going to. Doooood there are only like 18 black people in law school all across America, Who Cares?! We gotta stick together. LOL

Slight embellishment but you get my point.

Although this sense of community may have been more pronounced in the BLSD thread, when I came onto LSD (again, way back in the day) that same sense of community was present throughout the entire site. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, didn't matter. If you were going to law school it was exciting and you wanted to be around and talk to others who were also going to law school.

There were T-14 people of course, but the majority of the conversations were not dominated by that. Understandably, the legal profession is a very credentials-oriented profession, where the ranking of your school and whether you made law review there continue to follow you around until you die. That fact notwithstanding, I think it's completely reasonable to be able to restore that same sense of community on the board. It just takes, as you guys mentioned, more people speaking out about more issues where we have common ground. Yeah it's great to shoot for Harvard or what have you, more power to you, but guess what, the definition of Civil Battery is still "a harmful or offensive contact to the body of another without their consent" at Harvard Law the same as it is at Hofstra Law the same as it is at Notre Dame Law the same as it is at NYLS. We're all learning the same law, folks.

Logged

"A lawyer's either a social engineer or a parasite on society. A social engineer is a highly skilled...lawyer who understands the Constitution of the U.S. and knows how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering [our] conditions."Charles H. Houston

Yeah, it definitely ain't like it used to be. It used to be, if you posted in this thread at 10am, and messed around and came back at noon on the same day, your post was easily about 5 or 6 pages back. And don't post something at night and then go to bed. Done! You'd come back and see 30 new pages of conversation took place while you were getting your beauty rest and your post, whatever it was, was long gone!

Now I understand that the alumni are busy. Of course.

What I don't understand is why a new crop of pre-law students are not coming in by the droves? This site was one of the first things I looked up when I finally got my acceptance to law school. Is there some other site that folks are flocking to now or are they just not flocking to anything in general? And if not, what's the motivation to stay in hiding vs. coming out and meeting your potential classmates?

Most people are now at Top Law Schools. It has a pretty sweet search function and is a really organized board. Sad though because I've always liked LSD better and I think that LSD has better info for URM students.

I agree. I've visited that site. It sucks aesthetically.

However a SEARCH function would come in very handy. I can see how that could make a difference. I don't know happened to our search function here. It used to work. Perhaps that contributed to the decrease in traffic?

I'd put better-than-even money on that.

I know I gotta quote you quick before you poof and disappear!

Yeah that's something I think I'm going to definitely have to talk to Andrew about.

The search function is really only one small part of the problem. I can see all of the options in the poll playing some part. This place is just very closed off to new blood. There's an old guard mentality that's also deeply rooted in top-tier school elitism in many cases. I think a lot of new people may be afraid to speak up because all they see is talk about the "T14" in every forum. Granted, it's not nearly as bad as XOXO or even TLS, but it's still there. Whether that's by accident or by design is irrelevant; it's the effect that matters. We're going to need a full-scale paradigm shift to make any headway. We need to draw out some of the lurkers who are going to lower-ranked schools, lay the smack down on people who ridicule or demean anyone who goes to a lower-ranked school than they do, and try to quash the "T14 or starve" posts before they get started. Yes, that's going to take some serious moderators and much heavier hands than have been seen in the past. But any major change does.

No doubt.

When I came in (waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day when men were men and sheep were scared) there were your standard T-14 posters, but there were SO MANY MORE posters who were not going to any T-14 schools.

Indeed, if you look back on this very thread's beginning, there were hardly any regulars who were attending T-14's. We had "A" and his partners in crime "OSA" and "Monica" at Yale, Random Black Guy, Lacoste and KoreanBLack at Harvard, and that was about it.

Everybody else (over 90%) were from non-T-14 schools, myself included. And it was perfectly fine. Nobody poked fun at anybody else for not being in a T-14 and the non-T14 folk were proud of the those of us who were in attendance at the T-14's.

Now granted, BLSD may be a slightly different animal with respect to a sense of community, because for us, we were just glad to see another black person in law school PERIOD. It did not matter (and still doesn't) where the heck you got accepted to and what law school you ended up going to. Doooood there are only like 18 black people in law school all across America, Who Cares?! We gotta stick together. LOL

Slight embellishment but you get my point.

Although this sense of community may have been more pronounced in the BLSD thread, when I came onto LSD (again, way back in the day) that same sense of community was present throughout the entire site. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, didn't matter. If you were going to law school it was exciting and you wanted to be around and talk to others who were also going to law school.

There were T-14 people of course, but the majority of the conversations were not dominated by that. Understandably, the legal profession is a very credentials-oriented profession, where the ranking of your school and whether you made law review there continue to follow you around until you die. That fact notwithstanding, I think it's completely reasonable to be able to restore that same sense of community on the board. It just takes, as you guys mentioned, more people speaking out about more issues where we have common ground. Yeah it's great to shoot for Harvard or what have you, more power to you, but guess what, the definition of Civil Battery is still "a harmful or offensive contact to the body of another without their consent" at Harvard Law the same as it is at Hofstra Law the same as it is at Notre Dame Law the same as it is at NYLS. We're all learning the same law, folks.

Embellishment or not, that is a really important point, and something I think is missing from many areas of this board. In the social threads (SFLSD, Exile, MAS, BLSD, etc.) and even in the annual Acceptances and Rejections threads, people get a chance to be a cheerleader to or get a pat on the back from their favorite posters. But other than that, there's not a whole lot of cohesion among the community as a whole, and I think that even with those threads, a lot of people are getting left out in the cold. Whether that's because they're lurking and embarrassed to say what school they got rejected from, or don't think anyone's going to reply (or worse yet, make a sarcastic reply) to what school they did get admitted to, or for some other reason, I really don't know. But I know that it's important that we find out why and fix it if we want this place to turn back around.

Hear hear!

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"A lawyer's either a social engineer or a parasite on society. A social engineer is a highly skilled...lawyer who understands the Constitution of the U.S. and knows how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering [our] conditions."Charles H. Houston

When I first started posting on LSD, there were a lot of people around to give advice and many people from the Class of 2011 took advantage. Now, I don't mean to *&^% all over one group of people, but those folks in particular took a whole lot and rarely, if ever, give back now. Because the nature of this board is to be cyclical and rolls with the admissions season, each class relies upon their predecessors for advice. I can understand that as people get into the latter part of law school and graduate that they have less time to spend here. But when the visits back here are only for the social threads or are to ask questions for their own personal edification, it tends to kill a community.

God knows most of my posts haven't come from posting on-topic, but I do try to do so because I feel personally indebted to those that encouraged me last year when going through my own application process. I wish more people felt the same way.

When I first started posting on LSD, there were a lot of people around to give advice and many people from the Class of 2011 took advantage. Now, I don't mean to poo all over one group of people, but those folks in particular took a whole lot and rarely, if ever, give back now. Because the nature of this board is to be cyclical and rolls with the admissions season, each class relies upon their predecessors for advice. I can understand that as people get into the latter part of law school and graduate that they have less time to spend here. But when the visits back here are only for the social threads or are to ask questions for their own personal edification, it tends to kill a community.

God knows most of my posts haven't come from posting on-topic, but I do try to do so because I feel personally indebted to those that encouraged me last year when going through my own application process. I wish more people felt the same way.

Good point. I also think we all (my self very included) could do a better job of purposefully welcoming new folks. I don't mean posting in every thread HI WELCOME, but occasionally going out of our way to respond to newbs is we can asnwer thier question or point then in the right direction. This is espically true with the crappy search function, alot folks have threads tagged that might help the newbs that they won't find on thier own. What if we had a Weclome Thread or Introduce yourself thread (or better baord) where folks could dip thier toes in the water and say hi I'm new. Maybe it would be easier then to know where to look and how to be more welcoming. I think just a few posts by regualrs or contributors when anewb arvies (that are postive or helpfull or crtical of those being asses for no good reason) would go along way to getting people to stay rather than run off to TLS. As much as I hate that place they are pretty good at runing out the welcome waggon if you fit thier mold.

Logged

*In clinical studies, Matthies was well tolerated, but women who are pregnant, nursing or might become pregnant should not take or handle Matthies due to a rare, but serious side effect called him having to make child support payments.

When I first started posting on LSD, there were a lot of people around to give advice and many people from the Class of 2011 took advantage. Now, I don't mean to *&^% all over one group of people, but those folks in particular took a whole lot and rarely, if ever, give back now. Because the nature of this board is to be cyclical and rolls with the admissions season, each class relies upon their predecessors for advice. I can understand that as people get into the latter part of law school and graduate that they have less time to spend here. But when the visits back here are only for the social threads or are to ask questions for their own personal edification, it tends to kill a community.

God knows most of my posts haven't come from posting on-topic, but I do try to do so because I feel personally indebted to those that encouraged me last year when going through my own application process. I wish more people felt the same way.

Spot on!

I probably wouldn't be here as an attorney if it weren't for (i) the advice that I got from this website and (ii) the advice I got from the class 2 years ahead of me at my school, so I have no problem dropping back into either forums to give back.

When I was a 3L I had a 1L roommie and I dropped all of my knowledge onto him as did the rest of my 3L class (class of 07). That's just how we rolled. He reported back to me that his class (class of 09) took all of the info we gave them and kept it to themselves for the most part. He also said the class of 2010 did the same thing, and the class of 2011 did it even worse than 2010 so you may be on to something here, it may be a "generational" deterioration here. It seems that the "me me me" mentality is becoming more pronounced with each new class.

Let's hope that's not the case.

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"A lawyer's either a social engineer or a parasite on society. A social engineer is a highly skilled...lawyer who understands the Constitution of the U.S. and knows how to explore its uses in the solving of problems of local communities and in bettering [our] conditions."Charles H. Houston

need some personal advice on grades. I am rising 2L at a top 10 school gearing up for OCI. My grades are all around the school median (2.9-3.2) except my grade in property. I almost failed the course(below a 2.0). I was not sick during the exam, but the professor was very old school and apparently gave many low grades. After many attempts, the professor is unwilling to change the grade and I have no idea how to explain this situation to employers. I am interested in working for a firm, does this completely ruin my chances? I would really appreciate honest advice.

need some personal advice on grades. I am rising 2L at a top 10 school gearing up for OCI. My grades are all around the school median (2.9-3.2) except my grade in property. I almost failed the course(below a 2.0). I was not sick during the exam, but the professor was very old school and apparently gave many low grades. After many attempts, the professor is unwilling to change the grade and I have no idea how to explain this situation to employers. I am interested in working for a firm, does this completely ruin my chances? I would really appreciate honest advice.

Property is one of those subjects in law school where you can explain away a low grade and get away with it. For a large number of students itís the first year subject they do worst in (and you should hear the bitching about it in barbri). Because of all the old rules and estates, and RAP it gives lots of people problems. So just say look, property was my worst subject, that RAP question killed me, I hate the class and my grade shows. Most people will understand, because allot of them probably did bad in property too.

Logged

*In clinical studies, Matthies was well tolerated, but women who are pregnant, nursing or might become pregnant should not take or handle Matthies due to a rare, but serious side effect called him having to make child support payments.

i should add that my overall gpa is a 2.8 because of this very low grade.

That's rough.

I think, you know, it's going to be tough given the market right now. I know at UVA, for example, it is really difficult for kids with low GPAs to get firm offers.

The reality of the situation is that firms are cutting back on the number of offers they make for SA positions.

If I were you, I'd "hope for the best and prepare for the worst." In other words, explain away you grade in property and show firms that your really great fit and great personal qualities, but also look for other opportunities perhaps in government, non-profit, smaller markets, and consulting. You want to make sure that you have something to fall back on just in case the firm thing doesn't work out. Don't put all your eggs in one basket so to speak.

The bad news is: jobs are scarce and getting a job you don't want is infinitely better than no job at all. The good news is: you go to a top 10 law school so when the economy rebounds, you'll virtually be guaranteed to lateral into a firm position if you increase your performance throughout your 2L and 3L year. If the economy improves before you graduate, you could even get a entry level associate position during 3L OCI.

Of course, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you get the position you want this fall